Virtual Assembly Environment Modelling

In this paper, we present the virtual environment of assembly sequence generation of a product at the design stage. The interaction technique developed for the manipulation of virtual parts includes visual and haptic feedback limited to force sensation in the fingertips and weight and inertia parts sensation. At this stage of development, the parts and subassemblies have kinematics behaviour in the virtual scene. We present some guidelines for modeling a generic virtual environment for performing assembly tasks. Virtual parts modeling and connections modeling is based on characteristics of real parts and connections. The mating phase of assembly is based on the Snap-Fitting technique, which is improved by the addition of vectors in the symmetry axis of virtual parts. An XML modeling allows the environment to be generic and supporting different products.